La Residence to offer three-night Fashion Package

La Residence Hue Hotel & Spa is now offering the new “Long Lithe Vietnam” package that celebrates the 1,000 years of history of the “ao dai”, a garment as singular to Vietnam as the kimono is to Japan, coordinating a made-to-measure ao dai for female guests taking the package.

“After the conical hat, nothing quite says Vietnam like the ao dai,” said Mr. Phan Trong Minh, General Manager of La Residence. “It’s as iconic as pho, cyclos, and water buffalo.”

The three-night package includes tickets to a fashion show on the city’s most glamorous boulevard and accommodation in a room that drinks in views of the fabled Perfume River.

The package steps out from November 1 and runs through to October 2018. The cost is $699 and includes accommodation, tickets to the fashion show, one bespoke ao dai, and daily breakfast for two.

As a garment, the ao dai defies pigeon-holing as a dress or a pant suit. Its close-fitting tunic top drapes two long panels as far as the ankles, with slits from the hips to the hemline. The sleeves are tight, the collar typically buttoned up, and the slacks rather blousy. It’s quite frequently said that the ao dai reveals everything and shows nothing at the same time.

Unlike the cyclo and water buffalo, La Residence is helping guests take home this icon. “Long Lithe Vietnam” provides escorted visits to a renowned local tailor of the ao dai for material selection in silk and cotton and fittings for a custom-made garment.

La Residence Hue Hotel & Spa is set on a 2-ha site with 200 meters of frontage on the fabled Perfume River. It celebrated its grand opening in December 2005 after a painstaking restoration of a 1930s-built mansion. The hotel’s distinctive bowed façade, its long horizontal lines, and nautical flourishes are hallmarks of the streamlined modern school of art-deco architecture.

The hotel’s 122 rooms and suites, restaurants, lounges, bars and conference rooms are tricked out in complementary art-deco furnishings and décor that evoke both the 1920s and 1950s. The hotel’s fine-dining venue, Le Parfum, serves Mediterranean and French cuisine as well as dishes from an expansive Vietnamese menu.